ORLANDO | Come Out With Pride (COWP) announced its official theme, entertainers and list of events during a press conference at The Venue in Orlando July 31.

“2018 was a spectacular year. The weather was perfect and we had a lot of changes; the layout changed, we added a new stage, we added a huge new Marketplace, the energy level was absolutely incredible and we want to keep that going,” said COWP Board President Jeff Prystajko during the press conference.

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Thought we had a good trip. Overnight, pop-cultural legend – seriously, he did everything from acting to writing to performance art and especially making music – David Bowie died after a quiet 18-month battle with cancer. Gonna break character here and say that this particular editor has been up all night crying about the news, because a world without Bowie is actually a world without a sun or a moon in some manner, at least for me. I haven’t slept all night, nor have many of those out there, the young dudes, the kooks, the moonage daydreamers. Losing one of our generation’s largest, most intelligent influences is no small pill. Our sympathies, of course, lie with his family. Our feelings, however, lie on the ground in shards.

For those who don’t know of Bowie’s influence, his declarations of open- (or bi-) sexuality in the ’70s helped to break down stereotypes and blur the colors that we currently embrace as our spinning swirl of humanity. His embracing of androgyny was the reason we had a Culture Club, a Duran Duran or even a new-wave movement at all. He freed suburbanite children from their khakis and painted honesty on their faces instead. It is no overstatement to say that Bowie’s absence from this world is huge or that his presence while he was here was as phenomenal as the “Starman” we came to embrace. There are plenty of eulogies out there, riding through transoms as the sun rises on Jan. 11, so we’ll keep ours short.

Here is one of the absolute best films of the year. Spotlight is an honest movie about unlikely, humble, hardworking heroes – daily newspaper employees – doing their job and trying to change the world.

Every person passionately working in a public career hopes to have some lingering effect on the world. Committed actors wish to illuminate the human condition. Politicians start out wanting to make policy that helps people. Good priests and ministers hope to provide spiritual guidance that changes souls and transforms communities. Talented journalists write stories to expose the truth.

A University of South Florida political organization is calling for a change in the name of the CW Bill Young building on campus because of the namesake’s association with an anti-gay, state-sanctioned committee from the 1950s and 60s.

The Tampa Bay chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (TBSDS), which only has around 14 regular members, has a petition on the website Change.org asking that the building named after Rep. Bill Young which houses the ROTC program at USF be renamed. The petition currently has more than 400 signatures.

Janet-Concert-T-shirt-Tampa
Janet Jackson came to Tampa and all she got was this T-shirt, and she could not have been more excited about it. While performing on stage at the Amalie Arena during her “Unbreakable World Tour,” a fan threw a T-shirt on stage. Now gifts being thrown on stage by adoring fans are nothing new to Ms. Jackson, but this one left her visibly giddy as she opened up the shirt, and it read Penny-Charlene-Cleo-Justice, those being the first names of her iconic characters from Good Times, Diff’rent Strokes, Fame and Poetic Justice. The T-shirt was designed by St. Petersburg artist Chad Mize, who was unable to attend the concert, and was tossed on stage by his friend Ryan Prado. The T-shirt design, which lists four similar people, places or things, is becoming quite iconic itself with the World Tour shirt (Paris-London-Tokyo-St. Pete) being all the rage last year. The design even made appearances at this year’s TIGLFF events with the Sundance-Cannes-Toronto-TIGLFF t-shirts. HIGH FASHION!

Can the real Ybor City please stand up?
Hollywood is coming to Ybor… well, sort of. The rights to Tampa Bay writer Dennis Lehane’s novel, Live by Night, were bought by Oscar-winning writer/director/actor/producer/Batman Ben Affleck who will turn it into his next project. The story is set in Ybor City during the 1920s and ‘30s and is about a Boston thief’s rise to power as a Gulf Coast rum runner. Don’t dust off those acting chops just yet though my local performers. While the story takes place in the bay area, the lack of state tax incentives for movie productions has caused Mr. Affleck to head north some 270 miles to Brunswick, Georgia where he is building a fake Ybor City for the film. If you build it, they will come and come he will. The set designers have been busy building since early September preparing for Batman Ben’s arrival to begin shooting the first week of November. Sorry real Ybor and thanks Obama… oops, we mean thanks Rick Scott!

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Bust out the rainbow M16 assault rifles because things are about to get FABULOUS! The United States Army is about to become the world’s biggest pride parade thanks to President Obama’s nomination of Eric Fanning for secretary of the Army.

The only thing you need to know about Fanning is that he’s a gay! What other qualifications does one possibly need to essentially be the CEO of the U.S. Army?

Not the Orlando Gay Chorus, but the chorus of voices that annually rise up in our community (and I imagine in communities across the nation where similar events are staged) bemoaning the aspects of Pride that are not to their liking. Not in reference to the itinerary of Orlando COME OUT WITH PRIDE events, which span several days; I understand that not every event suits every one’s taste or budget. But if anyone would like to see different events or different takes on existing events, they have only but to volunteer their time and talent and time and energy and time and money and time to the presenting organization and become part of the event in an influential and meaningful way rather than simply criticize it. But I digress.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The television network that gets the most praise from an advocacy group that monitors content featuring gays, lesbians and transgender people has “family” in its name and targets an audience of teenage girls and young women.

GLAAD said in a report issued Sept. 3 that 74 percent of the programming hours on ABC Family included at least one LGBT character — the highest percentage any network has recorded since the group began issuing content reports in 2007. GLAAD studied the networks for a one-year period that ended May 31.

With 007 and the Mission: Impossible films still on our radars after decades, one might argue that we don’t need yet another franchise in this oeuvre. Director and co-writer Guy Ritchie’s take on the popular ‘60s TV show says otherwise. It’s a charming, clever and breezy lark with enough style for three films – escapist cinema at its most foppish.

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